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First, since many of you are wondering, I have *not* yet been asked to write any new Star Wars books. But that doesn’t mean I won’t receive such an invitation in the future. If that happens, whether or not I accept will depend on what kind of story I’m asked to write, what input I’d have on the content, what era the story will be set in, etc. I would certainly *like* to return to the GFFA, but at the moment that’s not my decision to make.

Second, as far as I can tell from the announcement, LFL is *not* erasing the EU, but simply making it clear that nothing there is official canon. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, nor does it immediately send everything into alternate-universe status. If nothing from the Thrawn Trilogy, say, is used in future movies (and if there’s nothing in the movies that contradicts it), then we can reasonably continue to assume that those events *did* happen. It looks to me like the “Legends” banner is going to be used mainly to distinguish Story-Group-Approved canon books from those that aren’t officially canon but might still exist.

Third, even if something from the Thrawn Trilogy *does* show up in a movie in a different form, we authors are masters of spackle, back-fill, and hand-waving. For example, if Ghent appears in the movies but never mentions Thrawn, I can argue that he simply doesn’t want to talk about that era, or else has completely forgotten about it. (Which for Ghent isn’t really much of a stretch.)

Finally, there’s nothing inherently demeaning in the term “Legends.” Think back (a little farther…a little farther) to Disney’s 1950s “Davy Crockett” TV series, (a show I grew up with) which presented stories and legends about the King of the Wild Frontier. Historians have Crockett’s genuine history, but there’s nothing that says these TV adventures *didn’t* happen, right? So until and unless the legend puts Davy in Tennessee at the same time the real history puts him in Virginia, we can still believe those adventures happened. That’s how I expect it to be with the “real” Star Wars history versus the “legendary” adventures of the EU.

Bottom line: let’s all sit back and relax and see what new adventures are offered to us, both in new books and new movies. It’ll be Star Wars, and that’s what counts.

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"I'm not mad at all that George Lucas literally made billions with three movies that aren't even half as good as the crap I didn't actually put into any of my dozen or so Star Wars novels. It's cool that no one outside the fandom knows that, without me, there wouldn't have been any prequel movies, and Star Wars would be a forgotten cult classic. If they don't want me to continue making the Expanded Universe awesome, that's fine. No, really, I'm not being sarcastic. Honest. I'm down with whatever."

Star Wars was dead in the water as far as new material goes when Dark Empire and the Thrawn Trilogy essentially proved to Lucas that people still gave a crap. I exaggerated, but nothing we've gotten since 1990 would've existed at all without Zahn's books, because everyone thought that no one cared.

Star Wars was dead in the water as far as new material goes when Dark Empire and the Thrawn Trilogy essentially proved to Lucas that people still gave a crap.

I know that's the popular viewpoint among EU fans, and those books certainly sparked a new interest in SW publishing, but it's always seemed to me like Lucas was more spurred to make the prequels after seeing the digital effects in Jurassic Park (1993, after which he started writing TPM) and the positive response to the Special Editions (1997, after which they started filming TPM). That's what he's always been quoted as saying, anyway. I know the Zahn books were huge deals to SW fans 23 years ago and it was cool that they made bestseller lists but Lucas has always been about the movies.

There was also a collection of the three novelizations into one (I think that's when I read ESB for the first time, not in Read-Along-Cassette [or Record] or Storybook form). Not sure when the 4-disc SW Trilogy CD collection came out, either (searches worldwide online data storage system to find... 1993; post-Zahn).

Again, Star Wars was hugely popular, then poof! Zahn was among, if not THE, reason for EXPANDING the existing SW saga's UNIVERSE. And MR. JJL, to your point about those other sci-fi type films, they gave Lucas the belief that future SW films could meet his own vision quality- and technology-wise, but would fans care? The Thrawn trilogy and Dark Empire comics said yes.